Wax On, Wax Off

Getting signed to the B-Boys eclectic Grand Royal record label is still the eqiuvilent of a miner 49er striking gold. I mean the b-boys three are still the reigning kings of avant hip-hop and Old School hi-jinx, so if they like your schtick, then you know it's gotta be bugged, dope or both. Such is the case with one Marty James, a sonically inclined cat from the wilds of NorCal, Chico, to be exact. The frontman, mastermind, and all-around multi-instrumentalist behind the moniker Scapegoat Wax, James dropped a sonic bomb back in the day (that would be early 1999 for those of you obsessed with dates) on the indie hip-hop label GoodVibe Recordings. Said joint, entitled Luxurious never actually made it to the stores, being pre-released to a bunch of taste makers in advance and then being shelved (or something to that effect, so don't quote me on it).

Flashforward to the summer of 2001, right now, okay, June 19th to be exact (and for those of you obsessed with dates) and the release of Scapegoat Wax's first proper album, Okeeblow. Those fortunate enough to have scrounged a copy of the earlier Luxurious will no doubt notice many of the same songs co-exist on both albums. But there's also a grip of new and re-worked stuff, too.

To try and nail down the sound of Scapegoat Wax would be something akin to a cardinal sin. It's a little bit country. It's a little bit punk. It's a little bit funk. It's a little bit hip. It's a little bit hop. It's a little bit rock. Hell, it's a little bit of a lot of different sonic genres, all of 'em good, all of them mixed to perfection.

Spence D. caught up with Marty J., the new kid on the Grand Royal block and this is what he had to say.

IGN For Men: Do you still live in Chico? Marty James: No, no, no. I live in LA, but whole family lives in Chico.

IGN4M: Right on. My aunt and uncle live up there. In fact my uncle's an architecht and he designed the Sierra Nevada Brewery. MJ: Oh really? That's quite a piece of work there. Yeah man, Chico's a really nice place, you know what I mean? It's cool.

IGN4M: I know that you spent some serious time in the bedroom studios of producers Mario Caldoto, Jr., Mickey P, and Eric Valentine. I mean those cats have worked with the B-Boys, Beck, and Smashmouth, respectively. So which one of them has the coolest bedroom? MJ: Umm, I think Mario's is the one that's actually...it's the only one that's really a bedroom. Eric's was more of a studio and Mickey's is more of a poolhouse. So Mario's the only one keepin' it real, but he's not really keepin' it real because it's his bedroom in his second house that he doesn't live it. It's just a studio. So, see, when you get up to that level it's like bedroom-shmedroom, right?

IGN4M: You still have your studio set up in your bedroom? MJ: Oh yeah. I think pretty soon here I'm gonna move into another spot just because my neighbors have been complaining. I'm in an apartment complex in LA.

IGN4M: Whaddya have, like old timer, crusty cruster neighbors? MJ: Yeah, man [laughs]. My landlord is like about 100 years old. She's lived in the apartment for like 50 years and I don't think she's really feelin' my drum beats.

IGN4M: Dude, you need to start bustin' out the old Lawrence Welk grooves. MJ: Yeah, I know [laughs]. That would get her dancin'.

IGN4M: You wrote your first song when you were 13, right? MJ: Yeah. I wrote my first real song that I recorded when I was 13. I had been writing songs before that, you know, but they were just like little practise raps or whatever.

IGN4M: So did you have one of those Playskool radios with a microphone so you could walk around singin' when you were a little tyke? MJ: I tried to move up quick, man. I was tryin' to find any way I could to rig it to where I could basically rap over beats. I would take other people's instrumentals, play 'em in one tape deck and then I'd have a tape deck with a built-in mic next to that. So I'd have the speaker from the first tape deck in my mouth rappin' and the other tape deck recordin'. I would do anything to just get some kind of songs together. From that I moved up and I got my own microphone and my own mixer and I got like a Casio keyboard. So I started early and by the time I was like 16 I pretty much knew my way around a studio. I knew my way around a mixing board, a sampler, a sequencers, all that stuff.

IGN4M: Who got you hooked on sonics? Was it your parents? Another relative? MJ: No, no one in my whole family was musical.

IGN4M: Then what? Were you like watching some random episode of Sesame Street and you saw Grover bangin' his head on a piano and you said 'That's it, I'm gonna be a musician!'? MJ: [laughs] No, you know basically it was just more like for some reason I just took a real liking to hip-hop mostly. I always loved pop and stuff growing up, but when I turned like 12, 13 I really liked rap and hip-hop. And from then that was like the only kind of music that existed to me. I really can't figure out why. I think, you know, that's the cool thing about hip-hop is that it appeals to big city kids and small city kids alike. So from there, basically, hip-hop was the only kind of music that agreed with me for a long time. And then I moved up, man, I had to progress and move into singing and melody and stuff. It's been a crazy...man, my brain's like everywhere right now. I'm just kind of covering everything in this one sentence. But yeah man, it's been a good transition for me. I've really grown as a songwriter and a singer, you know?